Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Richard Nixon had bad makeup; Gerald Ford prematurely liberated Poland
from Soviet domination; Ronald Reagan said “there you go again” and
asked if you were better off than you were four years ago; then four
years later, he promised not to use Walter Mondale’s “youth and
inexperience against him”; Michael Dukakis was insufficiently upset
about his wife’s hypothetical rape and murder; Dan Quayle equated
himself with John F. Kennedy and was then KO’ed when Senator Lloyd Bentson told him he was “no Jack Kennedy”; George H. W. Bush looked at his watch; Al Gore sighed.

The
obsessive hunt for such moments explains why countless thousands of
analysts, commentators, Tweeters, and bloggers will watch tonight’s
encounter with fingers poised over keyboards, looking for that one
parry, stumble, quip, metaphor or spontaneous outburst of eloquence that
will ascend into the Pantheon of Defining Moments, thus sparing them
the need to pronounce that “there were no knockdowns.”

For me,
reducing the half-century of presidential debates into a handful of
moments comes at a great price: It pushes into obscurity those
un-defining moments that deserve recognition—and in some cases may have
changed the public’s sense of who prevailed. I’ve compiled a list of a
few of my favorite under-the-radar retorts:

1) An Eddie Haskell
Moment: In their third 1960 encounter, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon
were asked to weigh in on President Harry Truman’s use of language—he
had more or less said that Nixon and the Republican Party could go to
hell. Looking somewhat amused, Kennedy said, “... I really don't think
there's anything that I could say to President Truman that's going to
cause him, at the age of seventy-six, to change his particular speaking
manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don't think I can.”

Nixon
would have none of it: “ I can only say that I'm very proud that
President Eisenhower restored dignity and decency and, frankly, good
language to the conduct of the presidency of the United States,” he
said. “And I only hope that, should I win this election, that I could
approach President Eisenhower in maintaining the dignity of the office.”

Eisenhower,
of course, was a career soldier, whose language could sometimes curl
ion in the Oval Office wallpaper; on the White House tapes, Nixon made
“expletive deleted” a catch phrase. More importantly, those debate words
reaffirmed Nixon’s status as the Eddie Haskell of his time. Like that
sycophant from Leave it to Beaver, Nixon was prone to pious hypocrisies
that made your teeth hurt. I’ve often wondered whether they drove just
enough voters to say, “come off it!” altering the outcome.

2) The
Warm-Up: The shorthand debate histories will note that in 1980, there
was only one debate, on October 28, just a week before the election.
Actually, another debate occurred more than a month earlier. But because
the League of Women Voters (then the sponsor of these contests) had
invited third-party candidate John Anderson to participate, President
Carter refused to attend. While not a memorable clash of ideas, this
overlooked debate did give Reagan a chance to demonstrate an amiable,
reasonable approach to issues, a sharp contrast to the bomb-throwing,
reckless image that the Carter campaign was painting of him.

When
asked by Fortune Magazine’s Carol Loomis what specific policies he had
that might prove unpopular, Reagan replied: “I believe that the only
unpopular measures, actually, that could be, or would be applied, would
be unpopular with the government, and with those, perhaps, some special
interest groups who are tied closely to government.” While not an
intellectually rigorous answer, it was reassuring to those worried that
Reagan’s conservatism threatened their federal benefits.

3)
Political Judo: The first and only time an independent candidate
participated in the same debates as the incumbent president and his
major party opponent happened in 1992. In the first debate, Ross Perot
demonstrated a keen sense of “political judo”— the ability to turn a
weakness into a strength.

When asked the predictable question
about his lack of political experience, Perot eagerly agreed. Yes, he
said, “I don’t have any experience in running up a $4 trillion debt.” By
some accounts (including mine at the time), he actually won that
debate. It’s one reason—along with his limitlessly deep pockets—that
Perot was able to win 19% of the popular vote, despite his sometimes
attenuated connection to reality.

4) I Feel Your Pain: During the
1992 Town Hall debate, a citizen asked the candidates, “How has the
national debt personally affected each of your lives, and if it hasn’t
how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common
people if you have no experience in what’s ailing them?” President
George W. Bush struggled to understand the question: “I think the
national debt affects everybody,” he said. The debt drives up interest
rates, he said, and continued with a wobbly answer that didn’t answer
the question. Then he asked the questioner “are you suggesting that if
someone has means then the national debt doesn’t affect them?” Moderator
Carole Simpson finally said to Bush, “I think she means more the
recession.”

When it was Bill Clinton’s turn, he walked right up
to the questioner. In tones that suggested a sympathetic social worker,
he said, “Tell me how it has affected you again? You know people who
have lost their jobs, lost their homes? Well, I’ve been governor of a
small state for 12 years. I’ll tell you how it’s affected me...I have
seen what’s happened in these last four years. When people lose their
jobs, there’s a good chance I’ll know them by their names.” The
then-governor launched into a broader indictment of the “12-years of
trickle-down economics” of the Reagan-Bush years. You’ll find no sharper
contrast of the right and wrong way to handle a citizen-questioner than
this one.

5) Beltway-Speak: During a 2000 debate, Vice
President Gore was trying to show that Governor Bush’s support for a
“Patient’s Bill of Rights” was empty rhetoric. He repeatedly cited “the
Dingell-Norwood bill” pending in Congress. “I specifically would like to
know,” he said, “whether Governor Bush will support the Dingle-Norwood
bill, which is the main one pending.” Bush said that the difference
between him and Gore was “I can get it [a patients’ bill of rights]
done.”

“What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?” Gore interjected.
On the merits, he scored. On the atmospherics, he seemed incapable of
going beyond the world of “Washington-speak.” Just imagine how Bill
Clinton would have dealt with the same issue.

These are a few of
my favorite “un-defining” debate moments. Had space allowed, I would
have shared another personal favorite: The dispute between Kennedy and
Nixon about whether the U.S. should help protect the Nationalist Chinese
islands of Quemoy and Matsu from mainland China’s attacks.